Armando's Collection of Poetry, Politics, and Philosophy

Tag Archives: reflections

There are still a lot of people reacting to this week’s election results. I’m not going to say there’s a simple solution, or that everyone should just focus on solutions, because many people are rightfully afraid. If nothing else, I’d just like to add my voice to the (thankfully) many people who have said “I’ll be there for you.” Also, apologies for the fact that my vocabulary in Spanish is not what it is in English.
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Dear Fellow Latinx,

You are beautiful. I know that statement may seem hard to believe after Tuesday’s election, but it’s true. No amount of hatred, bigotry, or votes otherwise can take away your inherent beauty and value.

I’m writing because I’ve seen many of you over the past few days. Whether you’re carrying a briefcase, a backpack, or nothing at all, there’s an uneasiness in your face. I get it; I can’t hide it either. The fundamental belief that people from everywhere are welcome in America has been undermined. There is no need to wait for the first draft of a new draconian law or the first brick in “The Wall” to believe that. If you’ll indulge me, I want to share a story.

Years ago, my sister worked at an ice cream restaurant. An elderly latinx man worked there, washing dishes. He was packed homemade food by his wife, which he would dutifully bring to work, heat up in a tupperware, and eat. In many ways, he reminded me of my grandparents. Also, he understood very little English. One day, some workers, many years his junior, began to make fun of him and laugh at him. Others joined in and laughed as well. The man, not knowing what they were saying but only reacting to their smiles and laughter, joined in to the laughing. The others, encouraged by this, only laughed harder at the mockery they made of this man.

I think about this story because it was one of the first times I thought about myself in a political way. I was heartbroken to think that someone who is trying to make his life better would be picked on like this. I was angry that people could find genuine pleasure out of demeaning another human being. I know situations like this have occurred ever since; but now, years later, this kind of behavior has been validated by the election of a monster.

What’s perhaps most infuriating to me is the nonchalance of people in the days following the election. The repeated claims of “We’ll be okay”, “It won’t be so bad”, or “We’ll see what happens” tend to come from well-off white men, often in the presence of working class people of color. Others ignore the inflammatory statements and focus instead solely on what the election means for them. Working latinx people have gone from being looked down upon before the election to being invisible afterwards. Our experiences, the threats raised (and now increasingly followed through) against us, our fears: none of them raise concern for some people in this country. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this when a mantra like “Black Lives Matter” received such a negative response from White America. We should not accept this as the new reality. We are not here to serve; we are here to live.

It’s okay to be stunned, or scared, or even really angry. The threat is by no means equal to all of us. No one knows for certain what kind of nightmare we’ve empowered for the next four years. That being said, it is also true that no one knows for certain how powerful we can be if we come together and fight back. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we need to realize we are not alone in this struggle. We are a patchwork majority of various backgrounds, passions, beliefs, and ideas. Our diversity, even within the latinx community, is an asset, not a weakness.

I believe in your beauty, your power, and our collective capacity to fight against what is to come. It’s because of this belief that I have something we all need right now: Hope.

Politics can be a beautiful thing. As the Supreme Court this week just upheld critical components of the Affordable Care Act and ruled on the constitutionality of banning same sex marriage, there is a great deal of excitement and discussion going on. One can only imagine just how historic this weekend’s NYC Pride Parade will be as it celebrates a tremendous achievement in the advancement of gay civil rights.

That all being said, it’s unfortunate that excitement, let alone discussion, of political issues comes after major decisions are made. Significant efforts had to be made to get the ACA case up to the Supreme Court. Years of organizing and jockeying outside the Court similarly elevated the importance of gay marriage. Admittedly, one can make the argument that to discuss gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act would be unfair, especially as it seems that, out of this week’s decisions, the greater focus is on former rather than the latter. While the ruling on gay marriage is, in fact, an historic achievement for the gay community, its scope really only falls within the (admittedly large and growing) gay community (unless you are one of those straight people who believe that gay marriage in some way will personally affect your marriage or relationships).

By contrast, the Affordable Care Act is an enormous document that completely changes the playing field for people who want or need healthcare. In other words, just about everybody. While the scope of the Court’s decision on the ACA is tremendous, I imagine the predominant narrative out of this week will be primarily on gay marriage, a decision that will not directly affect nearly as many people as the protection of the ACA. This also says nothing of the fact that with this fresh surge of ‘good’ news, it will only encourage the media, and by consequence, the general public, to move past the ‘bad’ news of racially motivated violence and inherent racism in this country (but we’ll get back to that in a moment).

The comparison between the ACA and gay marriage rulings isn’t meant to belittle the significance of one issue or the other. However, it does seem to illustrate a problem with how people in general address political issues. By and large, we don’t like talking about politics. Similarly to religion, we expect our beliefs and values to be respected for what they are. Unlike religion, however, the practice of politics is inherently between people; one can practice religion in a vacuum as they only need connection to his/her god(s). A person practicing politics by him/herself is just a person with ideas.

This distinction matters because while there can be some limitation to the challenging of one’s religious beliefs (example: you can worship that pancake that came out in the form of the Virgin Mary all you want), there are considerably less limitations to the challenging of one’s political beliefs (example: your political beliefs lead you to believe that people of color are inferior and we should establish laws to keep them to their rightfully lesser place). A person in the former example is pretty much harmless in a political discourse; a person in the latter is a serious threat to a free society.

The coupling of religion and politics has caused people to look at the values and beliefs in either to be treated exactly the same. In other words, my religious beliefs AND my political beliefs are sacred; to criticize either is an affront to my spiritual being and direct challenge to who I am. This is absurd and breaks down the possibility of being able to have an intelligent conversation about either.

In a time of social media and sharing of everything, this mindset is on full display whenever someone makes a ridiculous post. Luckily, such posts are not difficult to find in the immediate aftermath of the gay marriage ruling

Aside from the immediate frustration at the contents of the meme being shared (which itself could be a pretty sizeable blog post), the statement made by the poster is pretty childish in and of itself. “This is just my opinion. I’m not open for a debate so don’t bother commenting if you have something negative to say.” To voluntarily take up a hot-button issue like gay marriage but then request to only take feedback from people who are being positive is ridiculous. I can understand that people like to live in a bubble, but in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of people use facebook and the internet as a whole. If you want to live in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with what you say, you’re not using the right medium. If you don’t want to get into a discussion (let alone a debate) on serious issues, don’t post about serious topics.

The reason for sharing the above picture is that people who fall into this type of category, the “Here’s my opinion but don’t respond to this unless you’re going to agree with me” crowd are the unfortunate byproduct of narcissism, social media, and a lack of engagement on political issues. The priority for these people isn’t to engage in discussion of political issues, it’s to project their feelings of these political issues, to the point that the priority is their emotions, not the issues. Granted, there are plenty of people who are celebrating the decisions by the Court who have worked hard on getting to this point (and they certainly should be celebrating). However, not every person who is either celebrating or condemning the Supreme Court this week is willing to engage in dialogue on why this issue matters. Posts like the one above illustrate that clearly.

While people like the one above don’t wish to engage in politics at all, you then of course have your “socially-liberal-but-fiscally-conservative” people who will raise the alarm at the first instance of social injustice but shy away from the deeper discussion that necessarily follows any discussion on how to implement social changes. For a real-time example of how this happening, look at how the broader discussion that could be happening on systemic racism and whitewashed history in the US has become concentrated into a campaign to take down the Confederate flag.

Discussion of politics from a perspective based solely in social issues is the equivalent of saying that you’re swimming when in fact you’re just wading at shallow end of a pool. (For more on this issue, I’d highly recommend reading this great piece from Greta Christina).

In essence, we need to roll up our sleeves to engage in discussions of religion and politics. Without intelligent conversation on religion, we will repeatedly demonize, distance ourselves, and fail to reach common ground with those who are different from us. Without conversation on politics, the essence of our discourse becomes nothing more than another place for people to talk about “me, me, me” and less about what is actually going on in the world. We can’t do either of these without engaging with each other on the issues. And that means first opening yourself up to the possibility of being wrong (or right!).

We’ve all heard the expression at one point or another: “Don’t talk about religion or politics”, “Religion and politics aren’t things you talk about with company”, or something along those lines. It’s generally passed along as one of those social norms that we hear from our parents or caretakers. The idea, that bringing up such topics could potentially be offensive or excessively personal, is one that guides us towards getting along with others as opposed to being a controversial prick. However, given that a great deal of the voices in both the arenas of religion and politics could fit that description depending on who you ask, I think we might be approaching these topics incorrectly.

Simply put, maybe not talking about religion and politics has made us worse at understanding or navigating both.

Before we dive down this rabbit hole, let’s get some things out of the way. I’m not proposing that religion and/or politics are not important enough to be above normal or casual conversation; quite the opposite: because religion and politics are so important to individuals and groups as a whole, it is critical that that we, as individuals and society as a whole, have a solid understanding on both so that we can engage one another on the things that really matter in an intelligent and well-informed fashion. Second, this isn’t a rant about political correctness. While there are plenty of people upset at how “political correctness” has stifled public discourse and the efforts by some to ensure that no one gets offended (see “the War on Christmas”), consider this a rant about combating ignorance, not hurt feelings.

When it comes to religion, we’re generally born into a particular faith and go from there (a similar case could be made with politics, but we’ll get there later). Granted, some folks may find their particular flavor of religion later in life, but by and large we don’t exactly have the opportunity to shop around for religions growing up. Simply put, we get a biased opinion of which religion (or lack thereof) is “right” and which are “wrong”. This shouldn’t be an overly controversial claim.

What’s maybe not as immediately intuitive is the fact that when you factor this alongside the fact that we don’t engage in conversations about religion, especially with people who have different religious backgrounds, we eventually go from coddled and protected children to being coddled and ignorant adults. To make matters worse, whenever the topic of religion gets brought up, people are hesitant to engage on the topic due to the fear of offending someone else or getting offended themselves. It also doesn’t help that since we haven’t spoken on the topic before, we might not feel prepared to engage in a conversation about religion with people from different backgrounds.

In the absence of actually learning about the varieties of faith, we’re quick to pick up whatever is suggested by those in positions of authority. You can thank our elected officials, media figures, and even some religious leaders for that. (There’s a reason the term is “talking heads” and not “thinking brains”). Anybody remember the American perception to Muslims immediately following 9/11? How about the perception that still persists in certain areas of the US towards Muslims? The explanation of the “evil Muslims” provided a simple explanation for a horrific event. It also was a widely spread piece of propaganda that was largely unchallenged (and continues today). In other words, without actually have any understanding of Islam prior to 9/11, it was very convenient for Americans to accept the first piece of spoon-fed information on this strange and foreign faith that was provided. The well-informed, obviously, knew better.

The enemy wasn’t (and isn’t) Islam or any one set of religious beliefs; it was (and continues to be) ignorance. Just this week there was a great story of a bigoted protester converting his perception of Islam after actually seeing and talking to a group of Muslims. It shouldn’t be a huge stretch of the imagination to imagine how much better we would handle religion if we openly engaged in educated conversation about it on a regular basis. Instead, you have the engagement of different religious backgrounds through the context of protests and aggressive action (you may have never been to a protest or rally, but it’s hardly the kind of place where you go to patiently hear the opinion of your opposition…which again underscores the impressive nature of the above story).

There are a lot of people who place a great deal of stock in their religious or spiritual beliefs. However, it’s inevitable that all of those people do not have the same beliefs. Without having a way to calmly and intelligently communicate with people who believe a different set of ideals, we’re bound to have more cases of anti-(insert religion) rallies or protests. What’s most unfortunate about the news story of the man who had a change of heart when it came to his intolerance of Muslims is that it was news at all. A story like that is the exception when in fact it should be considered normal for people to engage in dialogue and learn from each other.

Of course, the blame can’t be placed entirely on our lack of discussing religion. Politics, which extends and affects every person whether we want it to or not, is a far more pervasive topic and therefore, a bigger crime is committed for every opportunity we pass up to discuss it honestly and intelligently.